Thursday, January 19, 2006

Globe 3G


Globe 3G
Originally uploaded by nocs.
Yesterday, was at the two towers and saw Globe's 3G demo booth at the bridge connecting the two buildings. With two lovely models inviting passerbys to try the 3G service, I coerced my companion to try the demo.



We tried a few streaming services, a handfull from ABS-CBN and while its not as good as an offline video (like the one played via TCPMP) in terms of picture quality, its still fairly viewable. Wonder how this compares with MobiTV?



Next we tried the video conf feature, was able to see the person on the other end (just a few feet away), a bit pixelated, although recognizable. If the bandwidth speed claimed is higher than dsl, maybe its the hardware at fault? Or maybe the choice of video streaming format for mobile devices?



Next we browsed a laptop assumed to be using the 3G service and it seems to be DSL'ish enough. I wasn't able to do a hands-on test on the lappy due to the person currently using it seems pre-occupied with his webmail.



According to the booth attendant, no definite launch date yet, but certainly it will be on 2006. No idea yet on pricing or packages that will be offered.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Sun Microsystems' Fab Four Reunites. One of the truly admirable company of our time. Some excerpts below:

Sun and Apple

Content to let his comrades do most of the talking, Joy became particularly animated when the informal conversation turned to Apple. He revealed that that there had been "six very close encounters" between the two companies, and called it a "personal disappointment" that Sun and Apple had never been able to complete a deal.

"As far as I know, we also almost bought Apple once," he said, to the audience's general glee. "We almost merged with Apple two other times." In addition, Sun, Apple, and Microsoft nearly agreed on a common filing protocol; Apple and Sun talked about sharing a software interface; and Sun tried to get Apple to move to the SPARC architecture.


Imagine OS X running on a SPARC processor! Or dtrace goodness on OS X!

Monday, January 16, 2006

Google's PDA website optimizer. No that is not the official name, just made it up.

Enter any url and it will try to format the content suitable for your PDA or any mobile device with a web browser. Similar to webxcope. Give it a spin!
Pinoytechblog.com - Pinoytechblog.com, a bit different today.

seems the domain expired?

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Oh goodie, netbeans mobility pack now available for the mac platform. NetBeans
ThinkGeek :: Freedom Keepsafe... Should be quite usable for those of us who seem to have short term memory when it comes to our gadgets. The device is a proximity based system and would set off an alarm when you are a few meters apart from your favorite gadget.

Priced $29.99. Maybe some enterprising pinoy could come up with a similar but inexpensive version.